BIG RAPIDS -- The Ferris State University Rube Goldberg team will travel to New York
City this weekend to appear on NBC’s TODAY show at 8:30 a.m. Sunday. They will also
appear on the Jimmy Kimmel Show on Friday, April 20 (time yet to be determined).

The team won first place in the national Rube Goldberg competition held at Purdue
University on March 31. The team won 1st place over Purdue University, University
of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M, Penn State University, University of Cincinnati, Hofstra
University and Washington State Community College.

Traveling to the shows will be co-advisors Tom Hollen of Grand Rapids, associate professor
of Mechanical Engineering Technology, and Dan Wanink of Ironwood, associate professor
of CAD Drafting/Tool Design; and team members Tom Sybrandy (captain) of Holt, Matt
Tomaszewski of Bryon Center, Mike Dunakin of Grand Rapids and James Travis III of
Cedar Springs. They will be accompanied by Assistant Director of News Services Leah
Nixon. The team’s fifth member, Fred Reinecke of Muskegon, is unable to be at the
shows due to being stationed in Iraq. The College of Technology students incorporated
such items as a toy train, a Slinky, a jack-in-the-box, dominoes and a hobby horse,
among other items, in a 345-step process to make freshly squeezed orange juice, thereby
setting a world record and beating out previous record holder and four-time defending
champion Purdue University to win the annual competition.

“We've come to the competition for the past four years, and after last year’s disappointment
when our machine had a malfunction, we really wanted to come back and win this year,"
said Sybrandy.

Purdue had previously held the world record for most elaborate device with a machine
that incorporated 125 steps. Ferris’ effort, in which the team invested more than
3,000 hours, is being submitted to Guinness World Records, which officially recognized
Purdue’s previous effort for “Largest Rube Goldberg.”

“At the beginning of the year we set the goal of 300 [different steps], “said senior
Tomaszewski. “We wanted to win as well as the set the world record for the most steps.”

Despite the whimsical nature of the event, the competition requires students to apply
a wide-range of engineering skills and work closely together to problem-solve the
many ways in which their intricate contraptions can fail to achieve their end result.
Winning machines must complete two successful runs, and points are deducted if students
have to assist the machine once it has started. Judges award points based on the creative
use of materials, team chemistry, flow of machine and the theme of a machine.

“As team advisor, I could not be more pleased with a team that made it their goals
to win and set a new record, and then met both of those goals,” said Hollen. “We want
to thank all the people in the University and College who helped these students achieve
success.”

The team is also the subject of a documentary film, which has been in the works for
the past year. An independent film company from California has been following and
filming the team since last year’s competition. They came to Big Rapids to follow
the team to Purdue.

The competition is named for Rube Goldberg – a cartoonist made famous by his elaborate
drawings of imaginary devices requiring many steps to perform simple everyday tasks.
The challenge of the 19th annual event was to take a whole orange, squeeze the juice
from it and then pour the juice into a glass using 20 or more steps. Past competitions
have required machines to perform such tasks as mark a ballot, toast a piece of bread
or put a stamp on an envelope.

Sponsors for this year’s event included Omega Engineering Inc. of Stamford, Conn.;
Minute Maid Co.; BAE Systems; Bosch Group Inc.; Daimler-Chrysler Corp.; General Electric
Co.; Kimberly-Clark Corp.; Lockheed Martin Corp.; and Motorola Inc. Purdue’s College
of Engineering and College of Technology also support the event.